Encounter
by Bons Baisers
Summary: Oneshot. Kagome falls off her bike coming home from school, and finds some unexpected help from Inuyasha... but is it really Inuyasha?


Disclaimer: Inuyasha doesn't belong to me, as much as it pains me to admit the fact.

A terrified scream tore from Kagome's throat. The pavement rushed up at her and when she hit, she skidded several meters, grazing her forearms, elbows and knees on the grey concrete. Her left ankle throbbed painfully; she vaguely remembered having struck it against the telephone pole somewhere behind her. Her limbs felt suddenly cold as the warmth of her blood pulsed over the abraded flesh and met the evening air. She shifted slightly, preparing to rise from her prone position, but a wave of pain and nausea swept over her, and she lay still.

She was aware of a crowd gathering around her. She could hear the woman she'd swerved to avoid still jabbering in Chinese on her cell, unmindful of her predicament. A metallic creak indicated that someone was attempting to remove her bicycle from the telephone pole she had crashed into. The ensuing stream of curses made it seem as if they weren't having much luck in the endeavor. Unsurprising; she had managed to wrap the handlebars around the pole when she'd careened into it. As she debated attempting to rise again, a familiar voice caught her attention, cutting through the pulsating pain in her ankle and the burning sting of her abrasions.

"She'll be alright," Inuyasha said confidently. "I'll take her home." Doubtful murmurings betrayed the unease of the bystanders. "Friend of the family," he told them smoothly. The muttering ceased.

She ought to have been upset that he'd ventured out of the shrine – she'd come home because of yet another ridiculous argument – but she was so relieved to not have to make her way home alone and injured that she resolved to forget the fight altogether. She wouldn't even chide him for leaving the shrine. She allowed herself to be turned over, keeping her eyes tightly closed. If she saw him there without a cap, in the Robe of the Fire Rat, she would be likely to forget her resolve, and she hurt too much to risk angering him and forfeiting his help.

A gentle hand slipped under her neck and raised her slightly. It caught hold of her shoulder, positioning itself to support her weight as another hand slid under her knees, meticulously avoiding the swollen left ankle. She felt herself being slowly lifted from the ground, felt him begin to walk away.

Her body relaxed in his careful arms, and the throbbing seemed to fade a little. His familiar scent comforted her, and she prepared herself for the imminent tirade with surprisingly little dread. He said nothing, however, and she nearly fell asleep as he carried her home.

Nearly. A bit of broken skin caught on the cotton of his shirt, and she shifted to free it. The incident was minor. She wouldn't have remembered it fifteen minutes later. Except… cotton? She frowned.

She opened her eyes, started. "Inuyasha?" she asked tentatively, confused.

Big dark eyes regarded hers thoughtfully. "What?" Not only was he wearing jeans and a sweater, he was in his human form.

"Where did you get those clothes?" she asked. "And… and you're human? How? It's not even close to the new moon."

"No," he agreed amiably. The base of her spine prickled nervously. Something was very wrong. She tensed, ignoring her injuries as best she could.

"Stop." He did so and looked down at her, his eyes curious. "Tell me what's going on. Now."

"Give me a minute," he answered, but his tone was placating, conciliatory. Very out of character.

"No," she insisted, growing worried. "Tell me, now, or put me down!" She began to struggle, but stopped cold as Inuyasha took to the air, lightly touching the rooftops with the tips of his sneakers as he flew. Something he absolutely should not have been able to do in his human state. Now frightened, not even certain anymore that it was Inuyasha carrying her as he bounded from building to building, she wanted to scream, but feared the reaction of the people in the streets below. She closed her eyes tightly, no longer trusting the person who held her. Finally, he landed. She immediately began to struggle, but his arms were like a vise.

"I'm sorry for that," he told her calmly as she fought. "Be still, won't you? The only danger threatening you right now is falling out of the god-tree." She looked around her. It was true; she was home, high in the branches of the tree where she had first met Inuyasha.

"Put me down," she demanded. He obliged her, gently setting her into the crook of the limb on which he stood.

"Watch," he said, pointing to the street beyond the shrine. He crouched beside her, his dark eyes a mystery. She gave the byway a cursory glance, noted some children on the opposite side, a pair of busses making their evening rounds, and the sun setting on the horizon.

"I want answers, Inuyasha," she began, but stopped mid-sentence as a terrible shrieking pierced the twilight. Turning so quickly that she would have fallen had Inuyasha not reached out to steady her, she gasped in horror. Below them in the street, the two busses had somehow collided. As she watched in dismay, one of them spun out and rolled onto its top, coming to rest just outside the entrance of the shrine. The other was more fortunate; the larger of the two, it merely came to a halt straddling the middle of the road.

"Oh," Kagome moaned, covering her mouth with her hand. Injuries forgotten, she moved to begin her descent from the tree, to call an ambulance, to help the wounded. Inuyasha caught her around the waist.

"It's alright," he told her, his eyes suddenly hooded. She opened her mouth to argue, but he lightly covered it with his fingers.

"I'm certain," he told her. He looked away. "You're the only one who was seriously injured in the accident."

Too confused to do anything but stare, she glanced back at the catastrophe below. Sure enough, people began to crawl out of the ruined bus. None seemed particularly injured, and no one seemed especially concerned about anyone still within.

"Your bicycle was ruined," Inuyasha said dully, still not looking at her. "The bystanders helped you onto the bus after they learned you lived here at the shrine. When the two collided, a post for standing passengers broke loose. It speared you through the belly, impaling you." Kagome began to shiver, horrified and frightened.

"I knew something was wrong," he continued, his voice still flat and dull. "I could smell your blood even beyond the well. When I came here, there was so much of it, the scent was so strong I almost lost consciousness. I followed it to the hospital, found Souta and your mother, both in tears. You were in surgery." She couldn't tear her eyes away. She stared, spellbound. His breathing became labored, and muscles clenched in his throat and jaw.

He drew a deep, shaky breath. "You survived, of course. You were too strong to be killed by a piece of metal in a freak accident. It left you scarred inside, though. You miscarried twice. But, you, you were always so stubborn. The hemorrhaging was so bad the third time that you bled to death. That was this morning."

He reached into the pocket of his jeans, and pulled out several worn beads and a pair of fangs. "The beads broke." His voice cracked.

Kagome looked at him silently, wide-eyed with disbelief and shock. For several moments neither spoke. Inuyasha crouched, half-turned away from her, miserably hunched over. He ground his teeth, fighting against the emotion that strove to reveal itself on his face. She watched him do it, unable to speak.

Finally, he exhaled slowly. His voice steadied, and he looked her full in the face for the first time since the crash. "That won't happen now. I've made sure of that."

"How," Kagome licked her lips nervously, "how did you get here?"

He shook his head, slowly, bemused, and looked away again. "I'm not sure. This tree… it was almost as if it spoke to me. I came here after… I touched it, I was thinking that if I'd been here, you would have never been in that bus to begin with, that I would have taken care of you. The tree seemed to ask me what I would have done if I had been here." He gritted his teeth and stood, crossing his arms. "I was pretty certain saving you was one thing I couldn't fuck up. All of a sudden, I was here."

"But you're human –" she remembered the harrowing ride home, "except you're not, really." She knit her brows together.

A brief smile touched his mouth. "Illusion. Shippo figured it out a long time ago." To prove it, he reached into a pocket again, and where a human man had been, a half-demon now stood.

Kagome bit her lip and haltingly asked the question she'd been longing to have answered. "And my… miscarriages… the babies… they… were they…?"

He looked down. His golden eyes were very soft in the darkness. "They were mine."

As Kagome digested this, a strange look came over Inuyasha's face. He knelt to touch the tree, so close Kagome could feel the warmth of his breath on her shoulder. He closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, it seemed as if he were focused on something far in the distance.

"How strange," he said finally, a sad, wry smile twisting his mouth. "I'm coming."

"What?"

He lowered one hand to touch her face. His eyes were soft, sad. Sincere. "Don't take him too seriously, Kagome. It's hard to be kind to someone you're afraid of."

Hot tears burned her eyes. "Afraid?" she whispered softly. He stroked her cheek lightly, then settled his hand at the nape of her neck, cupping the back of her head.

"It's easy to love, Kagome. Even for me, after I met you. "But… do you remember when I stole your jewel shards, and threw you down the well after the fight with Sesshoumaru?" Kagome nodded mutely.

"I had realized for the first time that allowing someone else to love you makes you vulnerable, because that person is vulnerable. It means knowing they'll take risks for you that they shouldn't, that they'll stay beside you when all the odds are against you. Knowing how far I would go for you, the sacrifices I would make for you, I couldn't stand the thought that you might be willing to do the same things for me. But that's a part of love, too, and I do understand that, eventually." He took his hands away and looked into the distance again.

"I understood it so well that I allowed you to die for your love." Kagome saw him swallow down the lump in his throat that threatened to break his voice. "You wanted us to have a child, so badly. I knew the risks, but letting you take them because you loved me, because you wanted a family with me, was the hardest thing I've ever done. And even though I've paid for it, I wouldn't change what I did. Even if I hadn't been able to return to this time, even if it meant living without you for the rest of my life."

Kagome reached for his hand, which was clenched tightly by his side. She said what he hadn't. "Because if you did change what you'd done, you wouldn't have been allowing me to love you." She tentatively pulled his clawed fingers open and laid a soft kiss in the palm of his hand. "Thank you."

He turned to look at her once more. "I have to leave." Taking her hand, he pulled her toward him, embracing her gently. "I am… glad… to have seen you, one last time." He broke away from her and stepped lightly off the limb of the tree. He floated for just a moment, and then vanished. With a cry, she reached for him. The sudden movement was too much; she overbalanced and plummeted toward the ground.

And landed neatly in Inuyasha's outstretched arms.

"Oi, bitch, do you just randomly fall off high places and expect me to catch you?" he demanded irritably. She stared at him, slack-jawed.

"What?" he growled.

Kagome searched his burning yellow eyes, shaking hard.

His nostrils flared suddenly, and his eyes left hers to examine the nasty scrapes and bruises the afternoon's accident had left on her limbs. They landed on her swollen ankle, now mottled purple and blue. There! There it was, a flash of real worry. He quickly hid it under a mask of frustration, but Kagome had seen it, a brief glimpse of the man who had held her in his arms a moment before.

"What the fuck!" he shouted.

Kagome felt a little smile playing at her mouth. "I fell off of my bicycle," she answered meekly.

"You are not bringing that metal carriage back with you anymore. I told you I was safer," he snarled, glowering at her.

All her pain had come back with a vengeance when he had noticed her injuries, but despite the stinging and throbbing, she was quite certain she had never been more content in her life.

"Of course," she agreed complacently.

"How the hell did you get up there with your ankle broken, anyway?" he growled suspiciously.

"A handsome stranger rescued me after I fell. He put me in the god-tree," she answered dreamily, the corners of her mouth still twitching.

"Who?" Inuyasha demanded loudly, eyes blazing.

She chuckled softly and closed her eyes. Her fingers found a lock of silver hair; she toyed with it shyly. "Don't worry, Inuyasha. You're the only handsome guy that ever comes to my rescue."

Kagome laid her head on his shoulder, relaxing in his arms. Her rescuer grunted slightly, the tale-tell sign that she had embarrassed him. Her smile widened; she knew without looking that the half-demon's cheeks had flushed bright red. With any luck, she had knocked him off-balance enough to forget that she hadn't answered his question.

"Can we go inside, please?" she asked, her smile hidden in his robe. "I don't feel very good." He didn't say a word, but carried her toward the house. Gently.

I'm getting very mixed reviews on this fic, and most of the negative ones seem to come from readers who missed the fact that the first Inuyasha to enter the story is from the future. In his time, Kagome had been seriously injured long before and dies from complications caused by that injury. After she dies, he returns to the past to prevent her ever having been hurt in the first place. Saving Kagome from the crash erases that possible future, and many of the events that shaped him into the person he is disappear. Simply put, he has no place to return to. Since it would cause a paradox for him to be in the same place as his younger self, he vanishes – ceases to exist – when the Inuyasha we all know and love comes through the well. But he leaves Kagome and Inuyasha to a – mostly – happily ever after.

So why didn't I put all that in the fic? Easy. I wrote it from Kagome's perspective. And Kagome, though at times surprisingly clever, doesn't know a damn thing about temporal mechanics. I am considering a rewrite, to make it somewhat easier to grasp, but I'm trying to figure out a way to make all the technicalities sound uncontrived. May not happen.


End file.
